V - Letter

Letter

The letter V comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details.

In Greek, the letter upsilon ⟨Υ⟩ was adapted from waw to represent, at first, the vowel as in "moon". This was later fronted to, the front rounded vowel spelled ⟨ü⟩ in German.

In Latin, a stemless variant shape of the upsilon was borrowed in early times as V—either directly from the Western Greek alphabet or from the Etruscan alphabet as an intermediary—to represent the same /u/ sound, as well as the consonantal /w/. Thus, num — originally spelled ⟨⟩ — was pronounced /num/ and via was pronounced /ˈwia/. From the 1st century A.D. on, depending on Vulgar Latin dialect, consonantal /w/ developed into /β/ (kept in Spanish), then later to /v/.

In Roman numerals, the letter V is used to represent the number 5. It was used because it resembled the convention of counting by notches carved in wood, with every fifth notch double-cut to form a "V".

During the Late Middle Ages, two forms of ⟨v⟩ developed, which were both used for its ancestor ⟨u⟩ and modern ⟨v⟩. The pointed form ⟨v⟩ was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form ⟨u⟩ was used in the middle or end, regardless of sound. So whereas valor and excuse appeared as in modern printing, have and upon were printed ⟨haue⟩ and ⟨vpon⟩. The first distinction between the letters ⟨u⟩ and ⟨v⟩ is recorded in a Gothic alphabet from 1386, where ⟨v⟩ preceded ⟨u⟩. By the mid-16th century, the ⟨v⟩ form was used to represent the consonant and ⟨u⟩ the vowel sound, giving us the modern letter ⟨u⟩. Capital ⟨U⟩ was not accepted as a distinct letter until many years later.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, /v/ represents the voiced labiodental fricative. See Help:IPA.

Like J, K, Q, X, and Z, V is not used very frequently in English. It is the 6th least common letter in the English language, with a frequency of about 1.03% in words. It appears frequently in the Spanish (where its pronunciation is the same as B) and French languages.

This letter, like Q and X, is not used in the Polish alphabet. /v/ is spelled with the letter ⟨w⟩ instead, following the convention of German.

In English, V is unusual in that it has not traditionally been doubled to indicate a short vowel, the way for example P is doubled to indicate the difference between super and supper. However, that is changing with newly coined words, such as divvy up and skivvies.

V is the only letter that cannot be used to form an English two-letter word in the game of Scrabble.